Learning contexts for young children in Chile: process quality assessment in preschool centres

ITERS (Infant and Toddler Environment Rating Scale), ECERS (Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale) and SACERS (School Age Care Environment Rating Scale) are used to measure process quality. The psychometric characteristics of the three scales are established, and high reliability and adequate validity are observed. The global quality process for the classrooms under study is less than good; process quality based on the direct interaction of adults with children in the classroom is better when compared with quality related to the experiences that children have with learning materials, equipment and space. The associations between child development outcomes and childcare quality are examined. Vocabulary, social development and adaptive behaviour show a strong and positive association with ECERS. Hierarchical regression analyses show that preschool quality has a significant and persistent effect in the variation of child outcomes (5%). These effects are maintained three years later, when children are in primary school (8%).     

STEAM Designed and Enacted: Understanding the Process of Design and Implementation of STEAM Curriculum in an Elementary School

Journal of Science Education and Technology - Educators are now moving classroom instructional objectives away from what content do we need to know towards how can we support learners in the...     

Sources of errors by capuchin monkeys on delayed response

Six capuchin monkeys were trained on a series of indirect, delayed response problems with delay intervals ranging from 0 to 60 sec. Data were analyzed by sequential state theory in order to quantify random and nonrandom components of the subjects’ response sequences. A tendency of the subjects to repeat responses to the position chosen on the previous trial was a significant source of proactive interference even when effective orienting responses were elicited by the predelay cue. Changes in random and nonrandom response components with increasing delays suggested a two-phase process: the first for delays up to 7 sec characterized by increases in random and nonrandom error-producing responses, and the second for delays greater than 7 sec characterized by increases in random responding only.     

Envisioning a Culturally Imaginative Educational Psychology

Culture has mostly been neglected in mainstream educational psychology research. In this paper, we argued for the need to cultivate a cultural imagination and provided seven key recommendations for conducting culturally imaginative research. We explained how these recommendations could prove useful in avoiding the two types of errors that trap cross-cultural researchers. The first type is the cultural attribution error which pertains to attributing any observed difference to culture even if culture is not the relevant factor. The second type is the cultural blind spot error which pertains to the failure to see how culture influences psycho-educational processes and outcomes. We proffered seven recommendations to avoid these twin pitfalls. We reviewed the papers published from 2006 to 2016 in four flagship educational psychology journals including the Journal of Educational Psychology, Contemporary Educational Psychology, Cognition and Instruction, and British Journal of Educational Psychology. Our review focused on how educational psychologists have studied culture over the past decade and how the published studies aligned with our seven recommendations. The content analysis indicated that only a small percentage of the articles dealt with culture, most of the studies drew on Western samples, and that almost all studies relied on an etic approach with very few studies using an emic bottom-up perspective. We ended with a justification for why a culturally imaginative educational psychology is urgently needed in an increasingly diverse world.     

The relationship between grit,self-control,and early grade reading: a trial measuring soft skills in rural Tanzania

Abstract

Soft skills such as grit, self-control, and self-confidence have been shown to predict outcomes in school and in life. As such, their valid and reliable measurement is of substantial interest in educational research and policy circles. However, the vast majority of this research originates in Western countries; relatively little is known regarding the measurement of soft skills in developing country contexts and whether similar types of instruments can provide evidence of these skills. This paper presents a novel means of assessing grit, self-control, and self-confidence in rural Tanzania: through the use of scenario-based self-report questionnaires. Survey instruments were administered in three regions in Tanzania to 961 Standard 2 pupils. We found that scenario-based items provided valid and, in most cases, reliable estimates of the three tested soft skills. When comparing self-reported soft skills and reading ability, we found that both grit and self-control were significant predictors of reading and mathematics performance. After controlling for sex, region, and age, grit was found to have a stronger association with reading performance than socioeconomic status.     

How does learning happen for people participating in adventure training?

Adventure training has become fashionable over the past few years in Hong Kong. Current Education Reform suggests learning should not be confined to the classroom, and adventure training is viewed as an alternative method to institutional routines for personal and group development. This paper reported a longitudinal study investigating how learning happened for four church members (out of twenty-five participants) purposively selected in an adventure team-building camp. Both quantitative and qualitative instruments were used. Results shed light on: (1) how the constructs of self-efficacy and organizational commitment helped to conceptualize what people meant by a team; (2) how qualitative findings revealed evidence of learning of the four members which could not be observed by quantitative findings; and (3) how participants experienced and learnt from adventure training.